Note to ǪrvOdd Ævdr 63VIII (Ǫrv 133)
[All]: There is no support from any of the prose versions of Ǫrv for the claim of this stanza that Oddr participated in the legendary battle at Brávǫllr (pl. Brávellir), where King Haraldr hilditǫnn ‘War-tooth’ was killed and his nephew, Sigurðr hringr ‘Ring’, king of the Swedes, won the victory. The legendary warrior Starkaðr fought on the side of the Swedes and a great many other champions participated, as told in the Brávallaþula ‘List of [participants at] Brávellir’, known to both Saxo Grammaticus (Saxo 2015, I, viii. 1. 1-5. 1, pp. 532-51) and the author of the Icelandic Fornk (ÍF 35, 60-9), based on a version of the now-lost Skjǫldunga saga. In Fornk (ÍF 35, 64), Oddr víðfǫrli is indeed named as one of the participants at the battle, fighting among the Norwegians, so it would seem that whoever composed this stanza was aware of a tradition that put Oddr at the battle.
References
- Bibliography
- ÍF 35 = Danakonunga sǫgur. Ed. Bjarni Guðnason. 1982.
- Fornk = Fornkonunga saga (Sǫgubrot af Fornkonungum).
- Saxo 2015 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2015. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Trans. Peter Fisher. Oxford Medieval Texts. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
- Internal references
- 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ǫrvar-Odds saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 804. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=35> (accessed 8 May 2024)